Thursday, August 30, 2018

From Washington, last week's events might just look like another round of blood-sport in a parliament beset by repeated political coups.

With the Kremlin now playing a third-party shadow role in U.S. elections, the usual game seems to be shifting from blood sport to cold war.

In Washington, where protecting bureaucratic turf is a blood sport, few are enthusiastic about the idea. We already have an Air Force and a National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The logical way to pour more money into space exploration, or even to colonize the moon, would be to increase their budgets.

The announcement comes as the academy struggles with declining ratings for its all-important Oscars telecast, which plummeted to an all-time low this year, and represent a clear effort to address perennial (lâu năm, luôn tái diễn) criticism, which has become a kind of annual social-media blood sport, that the show itself has grown too bloated (vênh váo, kiêu ngạo), tedious (chán ngắt, buồn tẻ, nhạt nhẽo) and out of touch with the interests and tastes of many mainstream moviegoers.

...Sperm (tinh trùng) from the US and Denmark dominate (thống trị) the market (thị trường) because those countries currently have the most supply (nguồn cung).

California Cryobank claims it is the largest sperm bank in the world by “any metric”; the firm has a pool of roughly 600 donors and a track record of 75,000 live births globally (toàn cầu) since 1977.

In Denmark, Cryos, the superstore for Viking sperm, is the main player. “California Cryobank is definitely the largest in the United States, but worldwide, we absolutely crush them. In Europe alone, we have close to 1,400 active and real donors; in the US around 200 donors. We sell to over 100 countries worldwide. We own Europe. If you want sperm in Europe, Cryos comes up, always”. The email signature on Cryos emails boasts: “The highest number of registered pregnancies (bà mẹ mang thai) in the world.”

About 90% of Danish sperm goes to other EU countries, said Karlstad University’s Sebastian Mohr, who wrote a book on Danish sperm banks.

One reason the US and Denmark are the heaviest hitters in the global sperm market: Laws allowing anonymity (ẩn danh) for donors, said Ayo Wahlberg, an anthropology professor (giáo sư nhân chủng học) at the University of Copenhagen.